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Allowing Cubans to sign cellphone contracts helped swell the state coffers but gave citizens a tool for information and communication. Every little move toward flexibility has provided some economic relief to the administration and, simultaneously, a relative loss of control.

“Raúlist reforms.” The octogenarian leader appears to know that if he speeds up change, the entire sociopolitical model could dismantle before his eyes. While he keeps delivering the same message and proclaiming that changes are “for more socialism,” the reality makes it clear that Cuba is transitioning to a sort of capitalism exempt of labor rights and civic freedom.

A growing number of Cubans build their own receivers to enjoy television programming from Florida. Copies of those shows, popularly known as “the package,” are distributed on USB sticks or external hard drives by clandestine networks.

tate-owned news outlets reported this month that the government would ban the use of coal in Beijing and other urban areas by 2020 in an effort to reduce the noxious air pollution that chokes many cities. In July, a Chinese academic who is also a senior lawmaker said the government was considering a national cap on coal use as soon as 2016.

But he and other officials have provided few details — and, indeed, have sent conflicting, even disturbing, signals about their plans. Some measures China is considering could actually exacerbate climate change. One particularly misguided plan, for instance, would involve building 50 large industrial facilities in western China to convert coal into synthetic natural gas.

report

the main reason neither Congress nor much of the American public cares about global warming is that, as problems go, it seems remote. Anyone who reads the latest National Climate Assessment, released on Tuesday, cannot possibly think that way any longer.

The study, produced by scientists from academia, government and the private sector, is the definitive statement of the present and future effects of climate change on the United States. Crippling droughts will become more frequent in drier regions; torrential rains and storm surges will increase in wet regions; sea levels will rise and coral reefs in Hawaii and Florida will die. Readers can pick their own regional catastrophes,

given skepticism about China from Africa’s own increasingly vibrant civil society, which is demanding to know what China’s billions of dollars in infrastructure building, mineral extraction and land acquisition mean for the daily lives and political rights of ordinary Africans.

at the start of a four-country African trip, Prime Minister Li Keqiang acknowledged “growing pains” in the relationship, and the need to “assure our African friends in all seriousness that China will never pursue a colonialist path like some countries did, or allow colonialism, which belongs to the past, to reappear in Africa.”

China takes our primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This was also the essence of colonialism.”

We’ve seen them now in the squares of Tunis, Cairo, Istanbul, New Delhi, Damascus, Tripoli, Beirut, Sana, Tehran, Moscow, Rio, Tel Aviv and Kiev, as well as in the virtual squares of Saudi Arabia, China and Vietnam.The latter three countries all have unusually large numbers of Facebook, Twitter or YouTube users, or their Chinese equivalents, which together constitute a virtual square where they connect, promote change and challenge authority. The most popular Vietnamese blogger, Nguyen Quang Lap, has more followers than any government newspaper here. In Saudi Arabia, one of the most popular Twitter hash tags is #If I met the King I would tell him.”

Square People one way or another “are demanding a new social contract” with the old guards who’ve dominated politics. “The people want their voice to be heard in every major debate,” not to mention better schools, roads and rule of law.